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  Esteban Kolsky 12:18:48 pm on March 19, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Communitiy, Continuous Improvement, dashboard, efm, feedback, Measurement, metrics, scorecard, Voice of the Customer

  On Dashboard, On Scorecard, On Metrics and Measurement…

  Wrong time of the year… I was trying to mimic Santa saying the name of the reindeer (you know, “Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!” – yeah, my brain is twisted sometimes, I know).

  Anyway, The idea of this post is to begin a discussion on metrics in customer service.  I covered a little about it during the series of posts on customer acquisition costs and benefits (to refresh your mind, post 1, post 2, and post 3 – go on, read them – I’ll wait).  That was the beginning of a slippery slope.  Following that Pulitzer-prize-worthy series I began to spend more time thinking about it.  See, one of my charters here at eVergance is to start a Measurement practice and I have been doing some work with that, following early work I did work while at Gartner. I created some slides, and some beginning of a methodology and I am getting some good ideas about how to make it work.  I wanted to share my top three “discoveries” I made and get your opinions.

  Discovery #1 – Yes, Virginia… feedback actually works.  Another poor reference, I know.  I have been advocating EFM (enterprise feedback management) since I created the concept while at that research firm named above (I am no name-dropper, once should be enough).  The idea is to tie the feedback you collect with existing data circulating through your enterprise.  Until not long ago we thought that doing so could improve product management, R&D, customer profiles, and BPM.  I am beginning to see Feedback differently now.  When used properly, and it works, it actually becomes the moving force that will help your measurement program progress from Reporting to Analytics to Continuous Improvement (think about this for a while… it is the subject of another post).

  Discovery #2 – United we stand.  Promise, that was the last bad reference.  Most organizations have recently taken the idea of using scorecards, dashboards, and feedback.  Of course, they are all being used in separate projects or pilot programs – even some stand-alone deployments.  Well, guess what?  That reasoning is flawed… you have to use dashboards, scorecards, and feedback around the same subjects, same topics, and same processes.  That’s right – unite your projects and programs already in progress under one common name.  Call it… Continuous Improvement or something like that and enjoy the success.

  Discovery #3 – Start small and go from there.  Now, most people look at Feedback or Measurement initiatives and get petrified by the sheer magnitude of the ultimate solution.  In most cases analysis paralysis takes over and the projects don’t advance or advance very slowly.  That, of course, is not the best way to do it.  You have to experiment, test the tools and your capabilities – see if you can make it work in your organization.  Start small.  Pick one area where you could benefit from (or test) a scorecard, a dashboard, an improved feedback or measurement initiative. “Play” with it and see what happens.  Then, take those lessons and begin to expand it across business units and eventually the organization.  Call the entire process something like, I don’t know, Continuous Improvement and work with it.

  I hope that by now you got the subtle hints of what you are supposed to be doing.  Are you ready for Continuous Improvement?  What do you think about it?
   

• Esteban Kolsky 06:52:12 am on February 19, 2009 | 3 | # |
  Tags: CRM, culture, customer service, enterprise feedback management, Experience, experience management, feedback, global surveys, satisfaction, surveys, Voice of the Customer

  Writing Global Surveys for Success, Not Failure

  Interesting title, don’t you think?

  Most companies that take on writing global surveys have failed at it.  Some of them did it once and the never again.  Others are still doing it wrong but since the results they get are what they want, they won’t change for fear of actually finding what their customers think of them.

  This is a touchy topic since it is very easy to fall into stereotypes and make generalizations about entire countries or regions, and end up looking like a bigot.  Which, I am not.  Thus, I am not going to point to any specific country or region around the world and say “these people do this” or “those people don’t understand that”.  Instead I am going to point at the more general problems and trends, and we can later work together if you are interested in a specific country or region.

  Four key things to remember when doing global surveys:

  1. Some people are polite.  Some cultures are too polite to really tell you what you want to know.  The best you will get is a polite response saying things are fine, when they are not.  This means you will learn to write the questions in different ways for those groups, and you will use different scales.  I know of at least one case where a client of mine with a 90% satisfaction score had an attrition ration in excess of 26%!  How did we solve it?  We figured out what questions to ask and what were the best scales to find out what customers really meant.  Trial and error works great in these situations.

  2. Some people are brutal.  On the other hand, some people are brutal.  You ask for feedback? no problem, you stink and your product is so bad it hurts me to use it… just like everybody else and all their products!  The key in this situation is to put things in proper perspective.  Sure, the brutal criticism may, just may, be well warranted – but chances are that everybody is getting similar feedback.  So, take the time to put it into perspective.  Try to benchmark your performance against your competitors or even your partners.  Work with a local service provider that can help you understand how your ratings rank in comparison, and work to improve your processes and products, not your scores so much.

  3. Languages are all different, literal translations are bad.  Asking someone if they are satisfied with the bad behavior they received from the last interaction is not a good question to lead off a survey.  Alas, I have seen it.  When you construct questions in one language, literal translations sometimes change the meaning of the question in a different language.  The more diverse the languages and differing their grammars and syntax rules, the worse it is.  Do it right, craft new questions with similar meaning in different questions.  However, they don’t have to ranked or rated the same way, nor be the exact same question – why?  See point 4.

  4. Reporting should be detailed, not generalized. Here is the biggest thing about doing global surveys, which I hope you gather from what i said before: each survey should target specifics for each region or country, and as such should be reported separately.  So, even if you use the same questions and scales, do not mix the results of two different locales in the reporting.  Let me say it again – do not mix results.  You probably already knew that, or probably figured out from the earlier points I made – so I won’t preach it again.  OK, just one more time – don’t mix results from different places.  Why? two words: skewed results.

  Bottom Line: write your surveys for each region or country in the region or country, using local resources.  Don’t cross-tabulate as scores don’t mean the same in different parts of this world. And make sure you report for each region or country, not across all of them in a single, global score.

  Need more? Got something to add?  That is what comments are for… feel free to let me know what you think.
   

• Esteban Kolsky 07:08:32 am on February 10, 2009 | 3 | # |
  Tags: CRM, customer service, enteprise feedback management, feedback, Feedback Management, surveys, Voice of the Customer

  Surveys Done Right – Part 4 – EFM Best Practices

  Ok, final part of this series.

  We so far have covered point-of-service surveys, customer-satisfaction surveys, and best-practices for surveys.  On to the best way to implement enterprise feedback management in your organization.  This is a set of best practices I use with all my clients to get them to understand what is the best way to adopt an Enterprise Feedback Management initiative.  Since I was told the previous posts were too long – on to the rest of this!

  Most organizations embark on feedback management programs with no clear objective or purpose, except to simply collect information from the client. This results in long, rambling surveys, improperly worded questions and poor response rates. More importantly, it results in an annoyed customer who must put up with an ill-prepared organization as well as valuable feedback being discarded because the organization doesn’t know what to do with it.

  Best Practice 1 – Determine the W’s

  Who: Most important in a feedback management program is determining the specific customers involved by segmenting . All other questions – what, when and why – are derived from knowing your feedback collection target. Some customers and segments will be more comfortable answering short surveys, while others won’t take the time. A survey for customers whose historical response rate is less than 10% would be a waste of time. However, direct feedback collection (via a conversation or call-out campaign) may yield a higher rate, as well as more feedback. Throwing a survey “over the wall” to see who answers is inefficient. Different users should be targeted using different methods. This most critical “W” must take precedence.

  Why: The most complicated question to ask in determining whether to collect customer feedback is why. Specific reasons for collecting the data (such as improving profile, maintaining customer satisfaction and ensuring compliance) tend to be overlooked once the project starts. Lack of a reason for collecting feedback leads to similar problems as a lack of purpose or an objective: messy, complex feedback events that achieve little success. World-class organizations focus on the specific reason to conduct the project as a way to determine the best questions to ask. This piece of data relies on knowing who is being asked for feedback and, along with the response, makes up the basis for answering the last two questions.

  What: Asking for feedback with no specific purpose often leads to violating the simple rules for surveys. The best surveys have one specific purpose, and all questions or actions support that purpose. Knowing what is being sought, as in a piece of information or insight, goes a long way toward reaching this goal. “Fishing” surveys, which usually have no purpose, tend to irritate users and accomplish nothing. Response rates are higher for single-purpose feedback events, and insights are easier to come by than for complex, multipurpose or no-purpose events.

  When: The best time to capture and channel feedback varies depending on the situation and process. Organizations deploying a feedback project must understand that for each situation it is imperative to capture feedback at the appropriate time. Asking for customer feedback or capturing feedback four weeks after an event leads to faulty memory of the event, thus inaccurate feedback. Conversely, requesting feedback before an interaction is complete, even if it takes several days, yields inconsistent feedback. For each project, consider when and how to capture feedback from customers as part of the planning and decision-making stage.

  Best Practice 2 – Create an Objective and a Goal

  Once your organization answers these four questions, it has the necessary information to set the survey objective. Goals, such as collecting information, measuring customer satisfaction and understanding what customers want, do not make for acceptable objectives or well-measured goals. Specific objectives must be aligned with an existing, ongoing or impending corporate strategy. For the success of the feedback collection event, the goal must be related to a well-understood metric already in use.

  In determining the objective and goal for your project, it is not sufficient to ask, “What am I trying to find out?” Qualify the objective based on the purpose in obtaining the information. Determining overall customer satisfaction, for example, will yield only the number of people who are satisfied but not the strategic value of the data. Why is this data important? Do you want to up-sell or cross-sell based on satisfaction, improve target markets, or increase response rates by knowing whom to target? Knowing the answers to these questions is more important than simply knowing the overall satisfaction level of your client base.

  Best Practice 3 – Define the Insight You Seek

  Outlining the results sought does not mean knowing the number or metric that will result from the feedback event but the statement that needs data. Most organizations blindly implement a feedback event, then spend a lot of time analyzing the results in the hope of getting useful insight. World-class organizations, however, already know the results but are unsure of the data that supports the outcome. For example, an organization that conducts a survey in the hope of
  determining how many satisfied customers are repeat customers knows which data elements to collect, their lifetime, how often to collect data and repeat data collection, and the meaning of the results. The enterprise may not be sure if the number is 15% or 20%, for example, but knows the intent of gathering the data.

  Organizations that undertake feedback management based on specific insights sought spend less time analyzing the data in the hope of finding the insights and understanding the correlation between data points, insights and strategies. In contrast, organizations that don’t implement these processes tend to expend too many resources pouring over collected data trying to make sense of it and relate it in a manner that translates into insights.

  Your turn – what do you think? Have you done this? What results have you achieved? Please leave a comment with your impressions…

   

• Esteban Kolsky 02:04:52 am on January 25, 2009 | 6 | # |
  Tags: CRM, Customer Experience, customer experience management, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction surveys, customer service, customers, enterprise feedback management, Experience, feedback, surveys, Voice of the Customer

  Surveys Done Right – Part 2 – Customer Satisfaction

  I have been dreading writing this entry since I came up with the idea for the series (have you read part 1 yet?).  It is not that I don’t know what to say, or that I don’t want to do it.  It is simply that my fear of providing “sample” survey that will later become “real surveys” for all people without customization or personalization really, really takes hold in this arena.  I mean, who has not had to write a customer satisfaction survey in the past?  It is probably the most used, misunderstood, and poorly implemented of all surveys out there.

  If we go by the surveys that I have seen, customer satisfaction surveys should only have one question since that is what most people care about anyways: “overall, how satisfied are you with us?”.  It seems that if the customer says they are overall satisfied then there are no problems.  Further, as long as we get a sufficient number of customers to say they are satisfied (somewhere in the mid-70s to mid-80s), and the number remains consistent or (gasp) even grows a little  we are perfectly set from the customer experience, loyalty, and satisfaction point of view.  After all, if 80% of people are satisfied – isn’t that good?  Well, yes and no.  I wrote about how you can ensure you will get a 90% of more in customer satisfaction surveys in the past (second most popular post in this site).  It is possible to score high – even increase your scores, and not be doing a good job.

  So, before we jump into the description of the survey and the sample questions (and before I beg you again to personalize and customize them), let’s make sure we understand one thing about this survey.  This “sample” survey is not intended to tell you how many people like you.  It is intended to, historically, provide a trending line of your customer satisfaction overall – but more important it is intended to give you real answers to partial satisfaction questions (e.g. were satisfied with the speed of the answer?) in accordance to your strategy (you do have one of those right?).  Finally, consider that I used these questions for customers that have customer satisfaction as a key metric and part of the insight.  I still believe that customer satisfaction is too flawed as a metric to be used reliably (also read this one), but a trending report cannot hurt – as it wouldn’t with any other metric.

  Too many words to get here, so here are the the essentials of a customer satisfaction survey (part 3 of this series, best practices for writing surveys – stay tuned!):

  • First, the most important part – KISS (keep it short and simple).  I use the rule of 5+/-2 (five, plus or minus two), with five being the magic number, and three and seven the limits.
  • Second, you MUST personalize the questions to the specific items you want to measure satisfaction on – which is why there are some questions below to use, but they may not fit what you are looking for.  Tie your questions to your strategy
  • Third, send them out every business cycle (varies by industry and function), and make sure you use panel management tools so you won’t keep sending them to the same person over and over (we know what they think – no one should get more than one a year), and that you don’t send them to people who won’t respond.
  • Fourth, statistical significance is great for market research or election day polls, not so much on customer satisfaction.  Make sure you get a large enough number to make it varied (I suggest at least between 3-4% of the population) and I am talking responses – not invitations.
  • Fifth, make sure you use the same questions the next time you send them out (yes, exactly the same wording) so you can keep historical trends.  Remember, customer satisfaction is an OK metric to keep as long as you use it as a historical trending metric, not a KPI

  Those are the basic rules for these surveys, but more will arise as you begin to implement them.  Of course, best practices for EFM and Surveys apply, so those are to be considered as well.  Now, without further ado, the list of questions I’d like to propose for your consideration:

  1. Overall, what is your satisfaction with Company XYZ? (hate this question, but it is an easy one to answer)

  Now, this question is to be answered in a numerical scale, I favor a scale of 1-4, you can use whatever works for your objectives.  A scale of 1-10 is popular with people who endorse NPS (Net Promoter Score), but I don’t buy into that.  A different way to ask this questions, which I prefer, is:

  1. Overall, would you say you are satisfied with Company XYZ?

  This question is answered with a simple YES-NO.  Why do I like this question? Two things, first the wording predisposes the respondent to say yes (which is a positive score).  Second, you can setup your scripts to react in the case of a negative answer – and since the question predisposes the respondent to say yes, when someone says NO they really mean it.

  From the following questions, pick some of the ones that reflect your objectives, vision, strategy, and purpose for this survey.  Remember, personalization and customization are highly encouraged – so if these don’t fit your needs go ahead and change them accordingly.

  2.1.  What is your satisfaction with Company XYZ web site / self-service solution?

  2.2. What is your satisfaction with Company XYZ representatives on the phone?

  2.3. What is your satisfaction with Product ABC from Company XYZ?

  2.4. What is your satisfaction with Company XYZ return policies?

  2.5. What is your satisfaction with Company XYZ use of email for customer service?

  Well, you get the idea.  Keep in mind that how you ask the question is going to depend on the answer, and see Q1 above to see some examples of different ways to write the questions.  Needless to say, again, the questions you chose for the second part are related to your specific, strategic goals and are bound to change for your survey.

  This is the longest post I wrote since we started this blog, but I wanted to make sure it was clear and explicit.  There is, of course, lots more to read and write about customer feedback, customer service, customer satisfaction… well, anything dealing with customers.  You will read more and we move along – but how do you like this post?  Interesting? Are you using it?  Please let me know your thoughts and experiences… and thanks for reading!

   

• Esteban Kolsky 06:14:49 pm on January 15, 2009 | 10 | # |
  Tags: CRM, customer service, enterprise feedback management, feedback, surveys, Voice of the Customer

  Surveys Done Right – Part 1 – Point-of-Service Surveys

  I am going to break some very old rules of mine to write this post.  Ever since I introduced the three-layer model for surveys while at Gartner (point-of-service, customer-satisfaction, planning) I have been getting requests for “sample questions”.  I have maintained, and continue to do, that I cannot provide sample questions since all questions need to be created according to the situation, respondent base, strategy and vision for your feedback initiative, as well as the standards and rules you set for your surveys.  Of course, they also have to be personalized to respondent and situation, and be written to match delivery and collection channel.  This is as basic as it gets when writing surveys.  My concern / problem is that when someone gets “sample questions” they become “THE questions” without further tinkering, and that is just wrong.

  So, the counterpoint to that is that I have seen the concept implemented (point-of-service surveys) with some truly horrendous ideas.  I have experienced “short” surveys of 10 questions asking all sorts of things, and questions so badly written that it is almost impossible to answer.  Thus, as a public service (yes, I know I am a selfless philanthropist when it comes to surveys) I am going to break the rule and make this post about two things: a reminder of how point-of-service surveys should be done, and a set of sample questions (which I will regret for a long time, and possibly my grand-kids will as well).

  First, how does this work.  Point-of-service (also called point-of-delivery) surveys are SHORT (yes, needs to be shouted), 2-3 questions surveys aimed to discover the efficacy (not the efficiency) of the service interaction.  In other words, did we do a good job delivering service and was it what you needed.  It is intended to spot any problems during delivery, and to fix them before they become customer service issues or lead to customers not being satisfied.  Simple, huh?

  Now, the main point of doing this is preventing service issues from becoming problems.  Thus, the critical part is not doing the survey, but actually having processes in place to reach out to customers and fix their problems when either of these questions returns a negative answer.  This is where most companies fail, they don’t have documented, specific processes in place to take care of negative answers quickly (yes, speed matters).  The reason I am bringing this up, even if you copy the questions from the bottom of this post – please, please, please make sure you have the necessary processes in place before doing these surveys.

  Final point I want to make, then we move to the actual questions.  Channel of delivery matters.  If at all possible, try to keep the survey in the same channel where the transaction took place, and to follow the interaction immediately.  If the customer called, make the survey an IVR-driven survey post-call (no, don’t have another call for follow up… it does not work that way).  Email came in? email going out (as quickly as possible, not 2-3 days later).  If you cannot maintain the channel of service be the channel of delivery (or you cannot make it immediately following the transaction) then your best bet is using email surveys.  No, not email with links to online surveys — email surveys.  The questions are within the email and they can answer simply and quickly.  OK, getting off the soap box now (yes, I am passionate about this “stuff” being done well).

  CAVEAT: I know I said this before, but please, please, pleaseeeeee customize these for your situation and personalize them. Please?

  Question 1 (this one should never change): Did you receive the answer you needed?

  Question 2 (choose from the three below based on what else you need to measure):

  Q2.1: Did we do a good job delivering the answer? (my favorite, but a little broad in meaning)

  Q2.2: Was our service cordial and polite? (in other words, who needs some training or talking to)

  Q2.3:Was our representative knowledgeable? (again, training or knowledge management issues)

  Q3.3: Was our representative prompt to answer your questions? (do they know what they need to know?)

  You get the idea, depending on what part of the interaction is critical you can change the second question.

  So, please don’t let me down. Customize, personalize and (more important) let me know how it goes…

   

• Esteban Kolsky 12:40:21 am on January 14, 2009 | 1 | # |
  Tags: business process, business process management, business processes, CRM, customer service, enteprise feedback management, feebdack management, feedback, process, twitter, Voice of the Customer

  So, They Finally Learned Customer Service, Right?

  If you hang around twitter these days, well – you are wasting precious time.

  No, seriously – if you do you will notice people tweeting more and more about the “new” Customer Service at most large corporations.  You will see how Telco X was much better than it used to be, or Bank Y has finally gotten it right.  The impressions are that since the economy turned south, these companies learned the true value of their customers.  If you are going to base your perceptions on that datum only you may end up with the idea that these large organizations that used to be terrible at customer service have finally, finally learned how to do Customer Service right.  And you may be happy about the prospect of finally getting decent or good service from your service providers.

  Well, hate to burst the bubble – but that is just not the way it is.  Sure, some of them may have improved some – even more than that depending on where they started.  However, there are three reasons why this is not going to be a long-term trend:

  1. Nothing has Changed.  It takes months and large investments of resources (people, time, money) to make changes to customer service.  Takes long re-training and hiring processes, changes to processes, systems, and rules, and lots more.  This is not accomplished in a short period of time.  Even if the changes are implemented the time it takes to extend to the entire organization is more than you can imagine.  It is not uncommon for these initiatives to be implemented in multiyear projects.  Corporations have not yet changed anything (or not enough), they simply have more idle time due to less business and those CSRs can spend more time with customers.

  2.  It is Event-Driven.  Economy goes down, we need to keep the remaining customers happy.  Tell everyone that they need to keep customers happy, empower them to offer more, let them satisfy the customers, change our business rules to reflect that.  All that will get short-term results: shorter transactions, better feedback scores, more satisfied customers.  What it does not do is make those changes permanent.  Once things go back to “normal” (meaning you realize the costs of this “good” customer service vs what you used to do is higher and go back to the previous state) theses initiatives will likely cease.  It won’t be overnight, but it won’t take that long either.  Businesses tend to have keen-jerk reactions only to change soon thereafter to something more moderate.  Expect the same here in about 4-6 months.

  3. Tactical is not Long Term.  That’s right, there is no vision, no strategy, no plan.  Simply a “liberalization” of the business rules and inflection points in favor of the customer.  Being simple tactical means that it carries the burden of proof without expectations.  In other words, there is no expected ROI or benefits in this move.  Alas, if there is no show of value (that is long-term value) in the decision to change within a relatively short time-frame (1-2 months) things will go back to normal (read as they were before) in no time.  There has got to be some expectation of a return of some type before it is made permanent – and a strategy sets those expectations (btw, it also takes a long time to set those expectations, not that easily done).

  So, have these large corporations finally learned customer service done right? Probably no.  Actually, highly likely no.  However, if they are smart they will see this as a good first step and continue down this path.

  Don’t you agree?

   

• Esteban Kolsky 05:58:58 pm on December 16, 2008 | 5 | # |
  Tags: Communities, CRM, enterprise feedback management, feedback, Feedback Management, social media, Voice of the Customer

  Shifting Priorities, or How to Become a Customer-Driven Organization

  So, how tired are you of hearing me — what’s the right word here… oh yeah — “emphasize” the need for customer centricity?  I wrote about it before in this blog, and I wrote and preached about it for over seven years at Gartner.  It was almost like a battle-call, each time I talked to a customer we always started with a discussion on customer-centricity.  So, with that in mind — how sad would you be if I were to tell you that customer centricity is a thing of the past?  How about if I told you that customer-focused organizations are not likely to make it either?  Shocking, I know… but let me explain.

  We are entering a state of business that is way different that we have seen so far.  Until now, and for the most part still continuing for the vast majority of organizations, our approach to business has been us versus them.  Company versus customers.  Come on, be honest – even when you talked about customer-centricity you were still trying to figure out how to create the best possible solution for your organization – not your customers.  Still there are plenty of verticals where this is the norm rather than the exception.  We are, by nature, trained to seek our own benefit above others.  That was fine —  until now.

  See, among the changes brought by social media (you know, that whole feedback-driven, blog-centric, twitter-infused model of businesses) came the recognition that customers are strong. not one by one, but as a group.  There are plenty of examples of businesses that either took advantage (Comcast) and reaped the rewards, or failed to notice it (Motrin) and paid the price.  The social media “revolution” has actually managed to change the world of business for those astute companies that noticed it.  The new world is no longer customer-centric — it is now customer-driven.

  Converting your business to customer-driven means that what you do is what your customers want you to do, and tell you to do.  You make the decision, of course, to engage in that business model.  However, if you do – their feedback drives your organization.  There is no more ignoring what they tell you or what they need – instead those demands become your driving force.  The reward for that? Loyalty and repeat business.

  Are you still with me? Still interested?  Good, here is what you need to do.  You don’t have to change that much what you do, just how you react.  See, the core principle of customer-driven businesses is feedback.  No, you are not getting away from that so easy.  You have to create your feedback strategy (and I am not just talking about surveys here), deploy it, collect feedback and constantly analyze it and implement changes based on it.  If you cannot make your organization move dynamically, this is not for you.  If you cannot quickly react to changes in what your customers need and want, then don’t bother.  This is for dynamic organizations that want to hear what their customers have to say – and react to it.

  Here is an example of a customer-driven business model.  Egg Bank in the UK heard their customers’ complaints about the lack of a specific type of account.  They thought it would be a good idea to create it, but they also wanted to make sure they delivered it exactly the way their customers’ wanted.  They implemented a series of short surveys to collect input on how to deliver that service.  They put out the survey for just three days and collected all sorts of feedback.  They later analyzed the information collected and within a week they had created a new product, conforming to their customers needs and desires, and it was an instant success (guess where the initial marketing list came from… yep, the people who provided feedback).

  Are you ready to let your customers drive your organization?

   

• Esteban Kolsky 12:11:17 am on November 14, 2008 | 5 | # |
  Tags: CEM, Communities, community, CRM, Customer Experience, customer experience management, customer service, enterprise feedback management, feedback, Voice of the Customer, Web 2.0

  Customer Service is Dead — Long Live Community Service!

  I have had lots of requests lately dealing with social media, and how to make good use of this for Customer Service and CRM – even broadening the scope into the entire enterprise.  Of course, this is related to the “explosion” in twitter, plurk, Facebook, blogging and related tools.  But, is there something else there? is there value in implementing communities?

  Yes, yes, yes, and yes.  This is the future of customer service.

  I have been working with communities, back then called collaborative customer service or forums, for some eight years.  Of course, back then we had little to go on – some forums, communities were nascent at best –  and we could not see how it would work best.  I wrote about it as the intermediate step between Customer Interaction Hub and Secret Customer Service.  Got some interest, did some strategy work, small lab-based deployments but almost no one at that time even attempted to take on it fully.

  Fast forward to today: communities are the rage – an integral part of Web 2.0. We still don’t have a clear path or a well defined purpose, but lots more is happening.  Now if the perfect time to get started – once the concept of community service becomes mainstream (12-18 months from now) it will move very, very fast for you to play catch up.  You can do this now and be prepared.

  The benefits of implementing community service are astronomical.  There are plenty of case studies (Mercury Interactive, Cisco, Microsoft, and more) that have moved either part or their entire support structure to communities or forums and have increased their customer satisfaction, reduced their costs of customer maintenance – even found new ways to increase revenue!  All this by switching from traditional customer service models to community service.  So, how do you make the move?  Three things to get started:

  1. Make sure your customers want it – Quite simple, there ain’t no community without people.  If your customers are not going to participate, nor do they feel they can get value out of it then the community will not succeed.  This is independent of topic, theme, method of operation or anything else.  Plenty of failures exist of communities launched without checking with customers first. Best way to start? start a community alongside the rest of your support structure.  Advertise it. Make it attractive. Populate it with good content. Commit time and resources to grow it.  then you start shifting people over slowly, finally make it the channel of choice.  Sounds simple; it is simple.

  2. Make sure your company can support it – Despite claims to the contrary, the most successful examples of community service are those where the company commits time, resources, knowledge and participants to them.  If your experts are involved in the community, take interest in it, answer questions and receive feedback from customers the community will grow and become useful to you.  If no one from your company ever enters the community, and it builds with its own content and resources, if you seem not to care about the feedback and knowledge built in it, then it will be a failure.

  3. Let it be – I know this is hard to understand, but you have to let the content be free.  Monitoring content, censoring entries, and controlling what goes where and how it flows through your community is not the way to go.  Think Wikipedia and self-regulating content.  It is likely that you will have to do some policing to get it started, but go lightly and err on the side of freedom.  Once the community is up and running, make sure you use reputation tools built into them so the people that matter the most (engineers and outside experts as an example) can be recognized.  Communities center around self-elected leaders and they are the ones that will control the content and quality of the community. Feel free to court them – but try not to control them.

  Final word of advice.  If you read my blog on customer experience management you know that I will advise you to integrate your community into your CEM strategy.  Yet, I will also advice you to make sure that you treat communities as the most important link between you and your customers since there is nothing that can replace the direct link you can have with them – and the free flow of information both ways.

  Are you working with communities? How is it going?  Do you see yoursefl replacing customer service with community service?

   

• Esteban Kolsky 01:19:00 pm on October 14, 2008 | 5 | # |
  Tags: CRM, customer service, enterprise feedback management, feedback, granularity, LinkedIn, surveys, Voice of the Customer

  The Uselessness of Granularity in Feedback Management

  Warning, we are embarking on another of my pet peeves: granularity.  What?  You don’t know what I am talking about about? Let me explain myself.  Granularity is how detailed of a scale you use when ranking feedback.  For example, you could use a simple Boolean scale, like Yes or No.  You could also use numeric scales, say between one and five.  Finally, you could use word scales, like Horrible, Bad, Neutral, Good, Excellent.  Either way, the concept is that you give the respondent a scale of choices to base their response to a specific feedback question.

  What could possibly be wrong with that?  Well, it is not the concept, but the implementation that gets me.  Same as with customer satisfaction and loyalty (you could click on these links for my previous rants on loyalty and satisfaction). The concept of giving people choices is good, as it creates way for them to express opinions on any topic.  It allows organizations to prioritize their efforts and focus on those that need more attention — a Horrible rating needs more attention than a Bad one.  Same thing for Good and Excellent.  See, the logic is good

  The most common used scale until recently was one through five.  That is not that bad, really, except for the odd number of options (more on this later).  However, some “genius” somewhere decided that five options is not enough.  We need to give the customers a scale from one to ten for them to grade us.  They call that granularity and the flawed assumption is that more options will give the organization a deeper understanding of the true feelings of their customers.  There are two problems with this logic:

  First, there are too many options. Customers are already hard to reach for qualified feedback, do you really want to add time to the survey – and so many choices for each question?  Consider a typical, not a good, customer satisfaction survey.  It has 12-15 questions.  Let’s assume that only nine of those questions have granular scales for answer.  In the time it takes a customer to decide whether questions number four and six deserve either a six or a seven the most likely outcome is that they will abandon the survey, or choose an answer without cause.

  The worse part of this, when you get the responses you cluster the answers because there is no real difference between six, seven, and potentially eight – they all become one!  So the time you asked your customer to take to choose the best granular-scale response was wasted, and the decrease in response rates is actually justified.  Customers realized long before you did the uselessness of granularity – and they stopped responding to granular-scale questions.  Not really worth the unlikely benefit of getting better definition of their needs and demands.

  I know what you are asking yourself: what scale should I use then?  A four-option, word scale: Poor, Bad, Good, Excellent.  Why four?  Remember when I said you did not want to have an odd number of options?  If you give customers five options, they will pick number three more often than not.  This is called, informally, fence-sitting and fulfills the purpose for customers to give you feedback but not take a position.  Was my service good? It was Neutral…what does Neutral mean?

  Anyway, I am now getting off my soap box.  Let me part with some statistics.  Among the people I recommended using this scale, and adopted it, customer satisfaction was up an average of 8 points, and response rate scored consistently higher – not with just one survey, but over time with returning customers.

  What do you think?  Are you going to try this?  Let me know your thoughts…

   

• Esteban Kolsky 04:56:07 am on October 7, 2008 | 3 | # |
  Tags: CRM, customer service, dashboard, feedback, Feedback Management, scorecard, Voice of the Customer

  What To Do With The Feedback You Collect From Your Customers

  It has been crazy and busy lately with EFM; I have been traveling the world spreading the word — and it has been so interesting.  It has amplified my views of EFM and given me lots of new ideas on what to do with this blog.  It has also given me an idea on spreading the word even faster: Twitter.  Do you twitter?  If not, you should check it out.  I am starting to spread the word on EFM via twitter — starting Monday October 13th, a new EFM insight a day via Twitter… tweet me!

  I have been doing lots of thinking and working with EFM at the strategic level, and it led to me think about the need to implement EFM properly.  I am not simply talking about putting together a strategy for EFM, which I do endorse highly, but also where does it fit within the overall organizational approach to feedback.  In other words, why would an organization take on collecting, analyzing, and reporting on feedback?  After all, if you can do a survey and get some data – isn’t that enough?

  Well, not quite.  The most interesting part of the question is actually what to do with the data and (more importantly) the insights collected and analyzed.  Yes, you can distribute a survey, collect some results, and report on them – even analyze them – and consider yourself done… but there is so much more.  Listen to this crazy, crazy approach to using EFM.

  First, make a commitment to using feedback as valuable data.  That means you won’t just measure customer satisfaction, or yes / no to some inane questions that may, just may, earn you a bonus – but not create insights into your customers or products.  Make a commitment to using feedback wisely as a strategy, collecting and analyzing key business metrics over time.  Once you do this, you have the basis for the second step… building a dashboard.

  Dashboards? how can they be related to feedback?  Well, you could build a dashboard simply by using efficiency metrics (number of calls, average handle time, average wait time, etc.), but wouldn’t you want to build one that means something for your business?  If you strategically determine the metrics that matter about your business, your services, your products — and the effectiveness-based metrics you must follow for the health of your business, you can then prepare a great real-time dashboard that shows you the health of your business — and tie those metrics to the feedback you collect!

  Alas, once you create a real-time view of your important metrics, and use feedback to populate that – what about the long-term view?  Glad you asked (OK, you didn’t, I did).  Once you have a real-time, short-term view of your business it is time to make the jump to long-term, strategic measurement.  The tool we use for that is a scorecard.  Ah, yes… the scorecard.  You can use feedback to measure your key metrics over time, spot historical trends, and see where you have to invest time and resources to improve your products, services and resources.  And the best part?  You get to do this as your improve your use of feedback – from taking surveys, to adopting EFM, to implementing Dashboards and Scorecards.

  Have you tried this?  Are you interested?  Let me know…

   

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